Postcard from Milan, Part III

Terzo Giorno (Third Day) 

 

Joel and Amy suggested we tour The Lakes north of Milan. We were fine with the idea, as long as we got back to Milan at a reasonable hour because I had to catch a plane home very early the next morning, and John’s talk at the conference was the next day.

        We met at their hotel, and caught a cab (yep, skipped on the tram) to the Cadorna train station. The train was not crowded. It was a relaxing ride through the suburbs and industrial areas of Milan into the countryside.  

Amy and I in Laveno, Italy.

        An hour and a half later, we arrived in Laveno on the banks of Lake Maggiore, the second largest lake in Italy. It was a picture perfect European village complete with a red roofed church steeple. It looked like a scene you’d see on a jigsaw puzzle.  

 Over a leisurely lakeside lunch, Joel told us that he’d lived nearby for a few months while he was on sabbatical. We were there at a good time, tourist season hadn’t started yet. 

Amy and Joel Baker, Lavena, Italy.

The ferry was almost empty. It was a great day to be out on the water, sunny, but cool enough for jackets. At each dock the crew would tie the boat off. Then the land crew would carry a ramp over, and place one end on the boat, one end on the dock. There were an impressive number of females working, but one that particularly stood out. 

I nudged Amy, “Check out the dock worker’s shoes. Do you think those are standard issue?” With that, she struck a pose in her black, high heeled, tango shoes. They say French women have style. Well, the Italian women are no slouches.

       When we got to Isola Bella, Joel told us this island was one of the best ones to explore. He was right. We wound our way up a labyrinth of narrow, walled, stone steps. In tiny alcoves, vendors had set up shops. We would shop on the way back down.

        At the top, it opened up to reveal a huge castle that was so big it looked like a hotel. This was the home of the Borromeo family.  The most famous family member was Saint Cardinal Carlo de Medici Borromeo (1538-1584), who was the Archbishop of Milan, Italy. The Borromeo’s transformed an old fishing village into a Baroque palazzo with a terraced Italian-style garden. It also had six grottos underneath the “house,” that were decorated with shells and pebbles.

Isola Bella, Italy.

         The dining room table was set with sparkling blue Murano glass dishes, service for 50? I collect blue glass, so of course I whipped my camera out. That’s the only picture I took inside because a woman rushed over to tell me that pictures were not allowed, but it was worth it. Notice the chandelier over the table. That’s also all made of glass. There was a unique, handmade (blown?) chandelier in each room of the mansion.

          The garden was gorgeous, sitting high above the lake. One walkway was lined with roses. An albino peacock strutted around the grounds. The only thing I didn’t care for was that I thought there were too many statues. There were many rare plants, and everything was well manicured.

Mussolini and Napolean had both visited the Borromeo estate. Now, the Starks have too!

We left Isola Bella, took the ferry to the town of Stresa, and got vague directions in Italian to the train station-- something about going up the hill and then going right. Let the trudging begin. Three miles later, we ran into two moms walking with five young children, and asked them in English where the train station was.

They asked us, “Espanol?” When we nodded, they told us in Spanish that we were close—turn right at the next street. At the arch turn left, then right again. Go straight ahead for awhile, and the train station will be on your left. A cute 4-year-old in their group enthusiastically and proudly told us, “Good Bye!” in English.

Their directions were exactly right. We cooled off with Italian beer (6 Euros each, $8.55 US each) while waiting 45 minutes for the next train. In the corner of the train station café, Shakira’s video of “Waka Waka” came on the TV set. I wondered what the Italians in the station would think if I started doing the Zumba routine to it. I decided that they probably wouldn’t care, but John, Joel, and Amy might. I restrained myself to fancy footwork under the table.

We all took turns nodding off on the train ride back to Milan. It got more crowded the closer we got to the city. In Milan, the train stopped, and everybody got off, except for us. This wasn’t the train station we’d left from. The sign said, “Garibaldi,” not “Cardona.”

We sat there for five minutes or so, then looked out the windows and noticed that the tracks ended in front of our train. This was literally the end of the line. Off we got, then looked for a cab. It ended up that Gariboldi wasn’t much further from the hotel than Cardona.

At Joel and Amy’s hotel, we sat down to an elegant, expensive dinner followed by made-up desserts that weren’t on the menu. Amy ordered tiramisu. Then Joel ordered the carmelized banana, and even though there wasn’t any on the menu, asked if they could put some vanilla gelato on top of it. The waiter checked, then came back and said that they could do that. Suddenly, John and I were ordering gelato too: chocolate and pistachio. Crazy Americanos!

It was late, almost 11:00, as we walked through the Piazza Fierenze (the last time for me), and I still had to pack.  A cab was picking me up bound for the airport at 4:45 the next morning. Today’s trip to Lake Maggiore had been a last taste of la dolce vita (the sweet life).

Buona Notte,

Laura

The next postcard will be the final one from Milan.  Laura Keolanui Stark can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.

              

Postcard from Milan

Primo Giorno (First Day)

               Buon giorno!  John and I are here in Milan, Italy and the weather is perfect—sunny with temperatures in the upper 60s, low 70s. 

Courtyard at The Regency Hotel, Milan, Italy.

              Our hotel, The Regency, is a restored noble residence from the 1800s with a Spanish feel to it. Located a few blocks from the Piazza Firenze, it is quiet although we can hear the trams going by every once in awhile. They look like the streetcars in San Francisco and New Orleans. Most of the apartment buildings around us are less than 10 stories high. All of them have balconies overflowing with lush plants, red blooming azaleas and maybe bougainvillea.

               It was late afternoon when we got settled. Our first meal in Italy was a prociutto e funghi (ham and mushroom) pizza with due birra (two beers) in a little mom and pop style café/convenience store a few blocks from the hotel. We were a little skeptical about how authentic the pizza would be because the waiter/cook was Asian, but he spoke Italian, and all the customers were Italian. The thin crusted pizza was delicious and perfect after our long trip.

John at The Duomo, Milan, Italy.

               This morning we caught a taxi to the Duomo Cathedral, the historic center of Milan. On the way we spotted a castle with a huge fountain spouting water high in the air, and watched Italians going about their Monday morning. We entered another Piazza (traffic circle) and there was the massive white marble Duomo reaching up into a clear blue sky. It looked like something that should top a wedding cake: intricate, lacy, and sparkling in the sun as if it was made of sugar.

“What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate , so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems ...a delusion of frostwork that might vanish with a breath!”--Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

The Duomo, Milan, Italy.

               I pulled a gauzy scarf up over my head as we entered the cool, dark, spectacular interior of the third largest cathedral in the world. From the outside, the Duomo with its flying buttresses is massive. I’ve seen other buildings that may be even bigger, but the difference is that the insides of those buildings are divided up into smaller rooms. 

          The interior of the Duomo is soaring open space held up by gigantic carved pillars with statues of Saints perched in niches near the tops of the columns. The marble floors with an elegant design in pink, white, black, and red are smooth from centuries of people coming to worship and visit. The stained glass windows tell stories from the Bible, the life of the Virgin Mary, and the Saints.

               Although you aren’t supposed to take pictures, everybody was snapping away with their cameras. We stopped at the bookstore on the way out and bought a book about the Duomo filled with pictures taken by professionals, and the history of the cathedral that took over 400 years to build.

               Back out in the sunlit square, we passed through an arch into the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a mall of ancient buildings covered by an iron and glass roof.  Prada, Louis Vuitton, and other famous designer storefronts lined the walkways that led out to the fashion district streets hosting Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, and Giorgio Armani among other famous designers.

Laura in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle II, Milan, Italy.

               The styles in the windows were clean and tailored, except for the shoes—minimum four inch stiletto heels with straps all over, guaranteed to make me fall and break an ankle if I wore them. Don’t know how they do it,  but there were women walking all over the cobblestones of Milan in those shoes. It was fun window shopping, but way too impractical and rich, hundreds or thousands of Euros (1 euro = $1.4069) to coax me into opening my wallet.

               Instead, I spent my money on creamy chocolate gelato and museums. One of the things I loved about Italy is that there were places to eat everywhere. Whenever we got hungry, we’d look up and there’d be a café or two to choose from.  We stopped at a little store/restaurant to eat lunch: orecchiette con I funghi (little ear-shaped or bowl-shaped pasta with a mushroom sauce) for me and spaghetti pomodoro (spaghetti with fresh tomatoes) for John. The Italians eat later than we do, so it was rarely crowded for us.

Afterwards, we wandered around some more and chanced upon the Museo Poldi Pezzoli. I’d seen it listed in my tour book and loved the symbol of the museum: Portrait of a Young Lady (15^th Century) by Antonio Pollaiolo.

We crossed the courtyard and bought our tickets. At first, we thought the whole museum was on the first floor: armour, tapestries, and lace, but no sign of the Portrait of a Young Lady. She was upstairs along with 16-18^th century clocks, Murano glass, precious ancient jewelry, and room after room filled with paintings by the masters including Botticelli’s The Virgin and Child and his Pieta. This fine collection was gathered by nobleman Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzolli and housed in his 19^th century aristocratic Milanese residence, a peaceful oasis in the middle of a busy city.

Mary's reading to Jesus in Botticelli's The Virgin and Child.

We strolled back down the Via Manzoni, past the Teatro Alla Scala opera house and the statue of Leonardo da Vinci, and decided to try to find the castle we’d seen from the cab.  Castello Sforzesco was easy to find with our map. We rested awhile beside the spectacular fountain.

There wasn’t much in the castle because the museums were closed, so we just walked through the courtyards out to the Parco Sempione. John, ever the biologist, spotted some turtles sunning themselves by a pond in the park. We exchanged picture taking with another couple, and dodged the locals kicking a soccer ball around. The Arco della Pace (Arc of Peace) was even more impressive close-up than when we’d viewed it from a distance.

This was where Corso Sempione began. We knew that it went straight to Piazza de Fierenze near our hotel. Trams kept running along the tracks parallel to the sidewalk we were on, but we hadn’t figured out how to get tickets to ride them.

Tree-lined Corso Sempione was beautiful, but it had been a long day with lots of walking. John could feel blisters forming. We didn’t want to call a cab because it seemed like Piazza de Fierenze should appear any minute. Funny how different map/cab-distance is from walking-distance. It was a long 3-mile walk “home,” on top of the other touring walking we’d done.

Back at the hotel, we changed shoes then left to eat dinner at a family restaurant that we could see from the window of our room: Stefano’s. This was our best meal in Italy. We started with Salata per Antipasta—a bed of spinach, butter lettuce and another lettuce with big, warm shrimp (gamberetti) served on top. For Il Primo (first course) we had lobster gnocchi. We were supposed to have Il secondo (the main course), but had to sacrifice that so we’d have enough room for Il Dolce (dessert). They had an unbelievable dessert cart, so it was hard to make up our minds. John had almond cake, and I had crème brulee. Both were the perfect ending to our molto bene meal and first full day in Italy!

Arrivederci,

Laura.

Secondo giorno en Milano will be coming up soon. Laura Keolanui Stark can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.com.